UHL

It was tournament weekend in the NCAA and one of the best match ups was the 10th annual Wells-Fargo Denver cup. Third ranked DU has won their tournament 7 times and this year they invited (#5) U-Mass Lowell, Bowling Green and Harvard to the party. As expected, DU and U-Mass Lowell battled for the cup in the championship game, however the story of the tourney was maturing process of the young (#14) Harvard Crimson team.

Game one: U-Mass Lowell vs Harvard Even though these teams are geographically very close, they had to come all the way to Denver to face each other for the very first time. A relatively inexperienced, young, under .500 goaltender, Will Crothers was matched up against the best goalie in the NCAA, Cam McCormick. McCormick’s resume includes an incomprehensible 0.62 GAA, .972 Save percentage and an 8-0-0 record.

Crothers weathered a storm of 36 shots on goal until the last few minutes of the third period when Laurent Meunier finally got one past him on a rebound. Mark Concannon shot one though the five hole a few minutes later to seal the win. Crother’s solid goaltending kept his team in the game until the very end and would give them even more confidence in the consolation game on Saturday.

While watching the preliminary round of the 2002 World Junior Tourney, I found myself with the distinct feeling that the Canadian entry was going to win first seed as their play over Russia and other competition was dominant. Two LA prospects, small centre Mike Cammalleri and Rw Jared Aulin along with the likes of Jason Spezza, Steven Weiss, and top two 2002 projected draft picks Rick Nash and Jay Bouwmeester were methodical, smart players who were able to penetrate with scoring chances while never sacrificing defense.

Their game against Team Finland, led by Ruutu, Mikko Koivu, and top five pick number one ranked goaltender Kari Lehtonen showed Canada could be dominated. Ruutu was the main cog at both ends of the ice, with a fine continued performance that have to bring smiles to the Hawk fans everywhere.

Could we trust that Mike Smith and his penchant for Europeans over North Americans was correct this time, when the Hawk “farm” was desperately in need of a future stopper? Compounding our second guessing is the fact Blackburn showed enough to the New York Rangers to keep him around as an 18-year-old back-up and continues to excel at the major league level.

Will Ruutu be a bigger impact to the Hawks? At this point, it would be pure speculation as Tuomo Ruutu must do his military service and will not get a chance for possibly 2003-04 season.

The things we can say are what we see: He is a dominant player at World Junior, a head above the rest. He went where he wanted and did want he wanted to. He was force inside the team game.

Michael Bartlett scored the winner early in the third period as the defending champion United States opened the world under-17 hockey challenge with a 5-4 victory Saturday over the Czech Republic. Western Canada joined the U.S. atop Pool A with a 9-0 victory over Germany. Ryan Getzlaf scored two goals and assisted on another to pace Western Canada past Germany. Chad Klassen, Jesse Fischer, Stefan Meyer, Mark Olafson, Nigel Dawes, Josh Froese and Stewart Thiessen also scored. Rejean Beauchemin got the shutout as Western Canada outshot Germany 50-23. Also in Pool A is Quebec.

Ontario opened Pool B play with a 13-1 romp over Atlantic Canada, and Pacific Canada defeated Finland 7-1. Nate Horton scored three goals and Jeff Carter, Jamie Tardif and Luch Aquino added two each in Ontario’s rout of Atlantic Canada. Brad Richardson, Anthony Stewart and Dylan Hunter also scored. Andrew Gordon had Atlantic Canada’s lone goal late in the first period as Ontario held a 50-20 advantage in shots. David Brown got the win in goal for Ontario.Mitch Bartley scored two goals and assisted on another to lead Pacific Canada past Finland. Tyler Czuba, Marc Connors, Colin Fraser, Cam Cunning and Ryan Stone also scored. Kim Nabb had the lone goal for Finland, midway through the second period, making the score 3-1. Also in Pool B is Russia.

Five Canadian regional teams, along with the U.S., Czech Republic, Germany, Finland and Russia are competing in the annual tournament. The 5 Canadian teams are divided in 5 different regional teams and they take on a full fledged European and US Read more»

The Albany River Rats enjoyed a holiday, of several days duration, following Saturday night?s 3-2 overtime victory over the Providence Bruins. It was the first time this season that the Rats emerged victorious when trailing after two periods (1-14-1).

The overtime game-winning goal, notched by Joel Bouchard, came on a 2-on-1 break featuring Bruce Gardiner setting up Bouchard. It was only the second overtime victory (Syracuse was the other) in twelve contests this year to go to the extra session.

The week began on the road in Hamilton, at Copps Coliseum. In the Rats? most offensive outburst in 20 minutes this season, Albany scored five times in the first period and took a 5-3 lead into the first intermission. Two periods later, the Rats emerged victorious, 8-6, to score the most goals since last spring when Albany scored 8 while hosting the Bulldogs at the Pepsi Arena.

For Albany fans who remember Walt Kyle?s Bulldogs as being a particularly stingy and cautious defense, this year?s Hamilton team is different. The Bulldogs led the league, through games played on December 22, with 125 goals, or 3.91 per game. For an Albany team that was at the bottom of the league (2.33 per game), the 8-goal outburst in Hamilton may have revived the confidence of some players who had not scored.

About the winner of this game was decided very soon. After thefirst four minutes the Swiss players were enjoying a 2:0 leadand were totally over the team of France. After two periodsthe score was already 7:0 and for the third period the Frenchteam changed the goalies and tactics. It was obvious that theycan´t do anything with the result, the Swiss players werein control of the game and they didn´t allow almost any shotat Matthias Schoder in their net. The French team playeda totally defensive game in the last period in order to getready for the relegation games, but couldn´t avoid a 8:0 loss.